Some 500 people, many of them women and children, were said to have been murdered in villages near Lake Tanganyika in Congo. Missionaries said rebels opposed to President Laurent Kabila were to blame.

Fierce fighting continued in Angola's central highlands between government and rebel forces. After a second UN aircraft was shot down, the UN secretary-general was expected to recommend withdrawal of the UN peacekeeping force.

American and Iraqi military aircraft clashed over the no-fly zone in southern Iraq. Saddam Hussein called on “the Arab nation” to back Iraq, rising up against Arab leaders who failed to do so. Several American newspapers suggested that UN inspectors in Iraq had spied for the United States.

Iran's intelligence ministry admitted that its agents had been directly implicated in the recent murders of political and intellectual dissidents. This unprecedented honesty will boost President Khatami's fight for a more open society.

The final stage

The impeachment trial of President Clinton, the first such trial for 130 years, opened in the Senate. William Rehnquist, the chief justice, was sworn in to preside amid much confusion. Trent Lott, the Republican leader in the Senate, said the trial would probably last until mid-February, and that each side would have to argue its case if it wished to call witnesses.

Mr Clinton, insisting on business as usual, said that he proposed to increase defence spending by $110 billion over the next six years, allowing for the biggest military pay increase since 1984. He also announced a projected 1999 federal budget surplus of at least $76 billion, up from an earlier White House forecast of $54 billion.

The White House eased restrictions on Cuba: greater freedom to send money, more charter flights, a direct mail service, sales of food to non-government bodies. But it offered no olive branch to the regime, and rejected the full-scale review of policy backed by some senators.

Colombia's government and left-wing FARC guerrillas formally opened peace talks-about-talks.

In Mexico, the PAN (right-wing) governor of Guanajuato state, Vicente Fox, said he would step down in November to pursue the PAN candidacy for the presidential election in 2000.

Peru's President Alberto Fujimori appointed a new prime minister, Victor Joy Way, giving him the economics portfolio as well.

Savage state

Violence flared in Pakistan as 17 Shia Muslims were shot dead while at prayer in a village in Punjab. The day before, on a road near Lahore, a bomb exploded killing four people. Officials believed it was an attempt to assassinate the prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, who was due to use the route.

Alien Germans

In response to plans by Germany's ruling Social Democrats to give foreigners living in the country dual citizenship, the opposition Christian Democrats and Social Christians said they would draw up a protest petition, arguing that the idea would cause social conflict. Their plan was called “dangerous” and “irresponsible” by ministers and Turkish groups, and criticised even by some Christian Democrats.

General Wesley Clark, NATO's supreme allied commander in Europe, gave warning that full-scale civil war could resume in the Serbian province of Kosovo, home to an ethnic-Albanian majority, within weeks. He blamed Serbia for provoking military tension in the province.

In a fit of concern about fraud in the EU, the European Parliament put pressure on several commissioners to resign. If the row is not resolved, the parliament could dismiss all 20 commissioners.